1 google, 2 google, 3 google ….GO
As everbody knows, Google intially started as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were doing their PHD in Stanford in 1996, ran under Stanford university website, as google.stanford.edu, and was registered as a company in September 4, 1998.
So if we look back in time we can see that 2 college kids, more then 10 years ago breached the search engines market who was dominated by Yahoo, and the question is how? How are they different? what did they do that it was so good so that they quickly revolutionized the search engine into a tool so useful that a mostly empty screen with just a logo and a search bar becomes the home page of millions?
Three simple steps:
1. They created BackRub
2. Received the first 100000 USD as funding, launched the company and initiated a fund raising.
3. Developed, went public and
GO we have one of the biggest companies, who may actually “owns” the Internet.
The top hit of google was the Page-Rank algorithm who changed the internet search from a”Tree search”, to a punctual result. The base algorithm is very easy:
PR(A) = (1 – d) + d * SUM ((PR(I->A)/C(I)) where
PR(A) is the page rank
d is more or less a constant 0,85 (attenuation factor)
PR(I->A) is the rank of the pages I which have a link to page A
C(I) the number of links of page I
PR(I->A)/C(I) the value that page A receives it from I
SUM (PR(I->A)/C(I)) is the sum of all the values that A from the pages which have a link to it
Google describes Page-Rank:
“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”"
With the search engine in place, g-mail appeared, and slowly took the market with their tactic, as been started as an exclusive club and innovative space storage initiative ( it deletes the Spam) . This was the second step in the process of Domination. In the years after Google took over the rest of the internet experience (markets): – Youtube was acquired in 2006 ( video), followed by Froogle ( for shoopers – Google product Search), and the company who created Blogger ( since 2001), created Google News, Google Maps, Picasa, Google CheckOut, Google trends, Google Chrome, Latitude, Documents, Adwords, Adsense etc… So what is wrong if a company is so good and they are the first choice in everything? Is Google EVIL? I f we look for the Antitrust case nowadays, this could be a real problems, or not?
What the Department of Justice is thinking:
- Google enjoys monopoly power over corporations that participate in its keyword auctions. This monopoly power is especially great when Google deals with corporations whose operations are largely fixed cost, such as hotels and airlines.
- Google is abusing its monopoly position by overcharging corporations for access to consumers. These charges are passed along to consumers and ultimately result in consumer harm.
- Google is likewise abusing its monopoly position, deterring market entry in areas that would benefit consumers and damaging potential entrants.
Any one of these would justify regulatory intervention. The second and possibly the third would also justify some form of financial compensation to those who could demonstrate that they had been damaged by Google.
Should the department be able to demonstrate the monopoly power of Google and the abuse of that… could be…. but until then we need to handle it to the guys as they did a great job in getting to be number 1.
